by Locked in a small cell with only an hour a day to walk in a cramped courtyard, he is almost completely cut off from the world.
But Evan Gershkovich, the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the Cold War, can receive mail, so colleagues and friends have set up a letter writing campaign to keep the spirits of the Wall Street Journal correspondent up.
Held in a notorious Moscow prison, where colleagues say he shares a cell with another inmate, Gershkovich, 31, can receive the letters, but only if they are in Russian so censors can read them and sent from inside the country.
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Polina Ivanova, who also worked in Russia for the financial timesis one of the organizers of the campaign, in which a group of volunteers in Russia take the letters, stuff the envelopes, take them to the post offices and mail them to the Lefortovo prison.
“One of the best ways to support him is to make sure he knows that he’s the center of everyone’s attention around the world right now,” he told NBC News last week. “The first response that he sent to his group of friends spoke of how important these letters are to him.”
In a statement issued through his Russian legal team on Friday, Gershkovich said he had been “honoured and deeply moved” by all the letters that had been sent to him.
Gershkovich was on a mission for The Wall Street Journal when he was arrested in Yekaterinburg by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, last month and detained on espionage charges. He will remain in pretrial detention until at least May 29.
The State Department has designated him as wrongfully detained, an assessment concurred by fellow reporter Matthew Luxmoore and his boss, Gordon Fairclough.
Russia may be willing to discuss a possible prisoner swap involving Gershkovich after a court delivers its verdict, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this month.
“He was a journalist doing his job, and journalism shouldn’t be a crime,” Fairclough said.
